On the Corner of Baker Street
by rellimmes
Summary: When two men and their companions finally meet, and one is very much convinced that the other isn't really a doctor at all...


**On the Corner of Baker Street **

"BORED!"

Another gunshot fired, another hole in the wall, and another call from Mrs. Hudson asking when exactly they were going to pay for it and whether she needed to end their 'lover's quarrel' as she called it. Another long, meaningless explanation by John to Mrs. Hudson as how it was not a lover quarrel and not gay in the slightest and yet another policeman at their door inquiring about the noise. Just another normal day at 221 Baker Street.

"Sherlock, you need to get out of that chair of yours _sometime_," John Watson rolled his eyes exasperatedly, trying to ignore the head in the refrigerator as he rummaged through the shelves looking for the milk jug. "Find a case or something, but don't use the wallpaper as target practice!"

"I spray painted the face on the wall for a reason John. If you don't like it, move out."

"And then who's going to get you out of trouble with the coppers when they come knocking on your door then, hmmn?" John snapped back. "Lestrade can't save your ass every time, you know."

"Course he can, what else is he good for?" Sherlock replied drolly, tossing his skull up in the air, catching it as it came down and throwing it back up again. "Doesn't do much in Scotland Yard... Good Lord, someone needs to die soon, I think I'm going insane!"

He tried shooting at the wall again, but John's pistol was out of bullets, so he chucked it at it instead. It hit the broadside with a loud _thunk! _John peered out from behind the kitchen door frame and stared at him. Sherlock shrugged. "What? You just said I need a case!"

John groaned, pouring himself a glass before sitting back down at his computer. "Not like that." He glanced over at the wall in concern. "Still, that wall's not going to be standing there forever if you keep it up."

"Then go find me something!"

Watson sighed, shut his laptop and raised an eyebrow at his flatmate. "And where do you suppose I find a body then? You don't just happen upon them in the streets, Sherlock."

The highly-functioning sociopath shrugged nonchalantly. "Molly has some."

"Molly works in a morgue! That's her job!"

Sherlock shrugged. "Still..."

Tried of his noncommittal gestures, John stood up, grabbed his coat and dragged his friend out the door. Sherlock tossed his skull on the couch as they passed, snatched his trench coat up off the rack and followed him out. "Where do you think you're going?"

John rolled his eyes. "We're going for a walk."

There is a certain sidewalk in London, one completely abnormal to every other sidewalk the human race has ever seen (except in Cardiff, where this was actually a normal occurrence), and although in looks exactly like most every other sidewalk in London it, at the moment, played host to a large blue police box, which was even larger on the inside, thank you very much. And popping out of this blue police box was a slender blonde woman and a perky-looking man holding something that looked remarkably like a screwdriver in his hand. And he was practically ecstatic.

"Do you know where we are, Rose? Do you?" the 10th Doctor chuckled, practically giddy with excitement. "Oh, this is just fantastic!"

"But Doctor, where are we?" Rose Tyler asked, closing the TARDIS door before following him down the street. "I mean, is it some parallel universe version of London?"

"Nope, this is your London, Rose, just a few years older," the Doctor replied, stopping at a sign, reading it and crossing the road. "Granted, the technology is a bit more advanced, but its the same overall. Oh, I do love the 21st Century. Everything here's so- so quaint!"

Rose sighed, laughed and locked arms with him as they strolled down the street. "So what are we doing here? Is there another Dalek takeover or something?"

The Doctor chuckled. "No, of course not. That's a couple months for now. We're in the year 2012."

"The year the world's supposed to end?"

"Precisely. But not yet, we'll be long gone before that's supposed to happen. We're recharging the TARDIS."

Rose glanced over at him, confused. "Couldn't we have done that in Cardiff. We could've visited Mum, you know."

The Doctor shook his head. "We can do that later. Right now we've got to see someone I've been dying to meet!" He grinned and pulled his companion along as they turned onto Baker Street. Rose raised an eyebrow. "And who is that?"

The Doctor was just about to reply when he spotted a pair of men, one short blonde fellow a bit on the stubby side and another rather tall, dark haired man with a blue scarf. They were in a heated argument. The Doctor grinned like Christmas had come early and pulled Rose along. "C'mon, here he is now."

He let go of Rose's arm and 'tripped' into the tall man's path, 'accidentally' falling right into him. The dark haired man simply stepped off to the side and caught his arm before he fell flat on his face. "Careful now."

The Doctor looked up and grinned politely. "So sorry chap, wasn't watching where I was going-"

The man looked down at him, blinking slowly. "Obviously."

"Hey, aren't you Sherlock Holmes?" the Doctor cut him off, holding his hand out for him to shake. "I've read all about you, you're some sort of genius!"

The blonde haired man next to him snorted in amusement. "That's what all the papers are calling him."

Rose looked at him, still very much confused. "Genius? Holmes? Doctor, do you know this person?"

The Doctor shook his head, still grinning even though he had retracted his hand because Sherlock had refused to shake it. He was still staring at the strange little man in a brown trench coat hanging onto every word he said. "No, I'm afraid we haven't," he replied for him. "You're a doctor, I presume?"

10 shrugged and looked over at Rose. "Of sorts."

"Of sorts?" Sherlock scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Either you're a Doctor or you're not, and you don't have the hands for surgery, making you not an actual Doctor at all. Maybe you have a Doctor of Philosophy, or a PhD in some field or another, but you obviously don't work in a hospital, because no doctor I know carries a screwdriver in their hand while they're on date."

The Doctor looked at him, turned a bit red but covering it up nicely. Rose's eyes widened in surprise while the blonde haired man next to her frowned. "Sherlock, enough. You don't need to show off to everyone you meet. I'm terribly sorry about that sir, he's had a rough week."

"Sure, sure, by no means," the Doctor replied, still looking at Sherlock and back to Rose before introducing them. "Rose Tyler, this is Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective. He's responsible for recovering that Turner painting of Reichenbach Falls."

Rose nodded, still unsure about the man. "Oh, of course..." Sherlock nodded to her and extended his hand. "A pleasure." Rose shook it warily but smiled up at him, and the detective did the same. 10 was staring at Sherlock, then Rose, at both their hands and back again before stepping in between them. "Well, again, I do apologize, it's lovely to finally meet you in person. We best be off. C'mon Rose."

He took Rose's hand again, waved good day and started off down the street. Sherlock stared after the couple curiously. "Strange," he muttered to himself before looking back over at John. "I think I've seen him before." He didn't notice the blue police box appearing out of nowhere, the couple climbing in before disappearing into thin air.

"But Doctor, who _was _that?" Rose asked for the final time as the TARDIS warped out of 2012 and across the dimensions again. "I've never heard of him, and I _live_ in this century!"

"A little bit after your time, Rose," 10 replied matter-of-factly, turning a couple knobs on the dashboard as he talked. "Sherlock Holmes was the only man to ever do battle with a Time Lord without any prior knowledge of their existence whatsoever and win. See Rose, I knew a Gallifreyan Time Lord back before the Last Great Time War, real piece of work. Actual psychopath, that one. He decided to try and alter Earth's time line one time too many, so I took away his Time Clock and left him stranded in the late 20th Century. He went to extremes to try and prove that he was still superior to everyone else after that, went a bit wonky towards the end. Finally he set his sights on a seemingly worthy opponent who would provide a decent challenge for him- Sherlock Holmes."

"So what happened?"

"Well, he got beat, didn't he?" the Doctor said. "He went by the name Moriarty while he lived on Earth, had a whole network of underground crime syndicates. Holmes got a glimpse of it right after he was acquitted of murder, and eventually brought most of it down single handedly.

It was a real nasty affair too, almost got Holmes killed. Moriarty threatened to kill his entire inner circle unless he committed suicide, and he nearly did. But then he realized that as long as Moriarty was alive he could save his friends and his life, so when he threatened to expose his alias 'Richard Brooks', Moriarty committed suicide himself. This exterminated the fail safe, and eventually Sherlock had to fake his death to complete the process. Of course, Moriarty staged his own death too, had a real laugh about it at all of England expense- and their tellys, for that mater..."

Rose's jaw dropped. "How'd he do it?" she asked, her voice filled with amazement. "Sherlock, I mean." 10 shrugged.

"You ought to look it up yourself. It's real fascinating stuff, so many conspiracy theories surrounding it even after he reappeared in public."

His companion crossed her arms and looked at him curiously. "You don't know, do you?"

10 scoffed. "Never said I knew everything, did I? Knowledge was never made public, even after he died."

Rose grinned and headed for the TARDIS library. The Doctor grinned and shook his head. _So inquisitive, that one... _

John was trudging to keep up with Sherlock as he headed straight back to the flat, muttering to himself incessantly. "Sherlock!" he called after him. "Sherlock, wait! Where are you going?"

"Home John."

"But why?"

Sherlock sighed. "I've seen that man before!" he explained impatiently. "I know I have!" He burst into his building, dashed up the stairs and threw himself in front of his laptop, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "See John," he said, pointing at a collage of black-and-white photos and several old articles pulled up on the screen. "He's right there!"

John squinted to see a small figure of a man in the background of a very dated portrait of William Shakespeare and his theater company. "Sherlock, that picture's over a hundred years old! You're talking nonsense."

Sherlock groaned and starting typing again, searching for a better picture quality. "Don't you see John, that's him! There's this strange man who appears in just about every world event in modern day history, always in the background, always recorded as simply 'the Doctor', if anything at all. He's in history books all across the nation, whole conspiracy theories surrounding his appearances and clothing that isn't even from the time period. Scholars have never been able to explain it!"

His friend looked at him, unconvinced. "That doesn't explain the girl, Sherlock. If this man's some sort of time traveler, then what's he doing with a girl?"

Sherlock pulled up another picture, this time of Queen Victoria. This time there were two characters in it with her, the strange man and a girl that looked remarkably similar to the girl they had seen either that day. "Alright, I'll admit, that's off, but I still don't see why-"

"John, that girl is _the_ Rose Tyler! There was a girl who lived in Cardiff a few years back, disappeared without a trace. She up and left her job, her mother, her entire life, all just like that! The police always suspected the boyfriend, but they couldn't tie anything to him. He disappeared soon after that. Can't you see John, it's all linked!"

The detective stared at the screen again, scanning over every detail and finding his eyes always being drawn back to the two out of place figures in the picture. "And it all revolves around _him_."

His friend frowned and sank back into the chair next to him. "What does that mean for us then?"

Sherlock Holmes rolled his eyes and bounded out of his chair again, heading straight for the door and putting his coat on in stride. "Can't you see John? It's a case!"

**End**

**Written with Abznormal, hope it isn't too terribly awful! **

**R&R**

**rellimmes **


End file.
